Question 1

Can my travel agency software send a customer a quote with two or three options to choose from?

Accepted Answer

Yes, most travel agency software lets you build one quote that shows two or three options side by side, and it is one of the parts agents use most. You put the quote together once, add the flights, hotels or packages you want to offer, and the software lays them out as separate choices with a total for each one. The customer sees the same tidy document for every option, which makes it much easier for them to compare and come back to you. How those options appear depends on the software and on the plan you are on. Some setups send a document by email, others send a link to a page where the customer can open each option, read the day by day detail and pick one. If the quote is built from live supplier prices, you can usually refresh the totals before sending, but prices and availability can still move between the moment you prepare the quote and the moment your customer accepts it, so a final check is always sensible. When the customer chooses an option, a good system carries that choice into a booking instead of making you type it all again. Whether it can then be confirmed on the spot depends on the supplier or the API sitting behind that option. Some confirm straight away, some need a request and a wait, and anything you arranged yourself offline will still need you to confirm it by hand. If quoting is a big part of your day, ask to see what the customer actually receives in your own branding, and check whether your plan includes the side by side layout or only one quote for each enquiry.

Question 2

Can my travel agency software store my customers' passport details and warn me when a passport is about to expire?

Accepted Answer

Yes. Most travel agency software keeps a profile for each customer where you can save the details you need again and again, including the passport number, the name exactly as it is printed, the nationality and the expiry date, so your staff are not asking the same traveller for the same information before every trip. The warning part depends on the system you use. Many will put a flag on the profile or send your team a reminder when a passport is getting close to running out, which matters because a lot of countries want the passport to stay valid for several months beyond the travel date. Whether that reminder reaches you on its own, or whether somebody has to run a report and look, varies by provider and sometimes by the plan you are on, so please ask before you start relying on it. Passport information needs care. Give it only to the staff who genuinely need it, keep their access levels tight, and clear out details you no longer have a reason to hold. The privacy rules in your own country decide how long you may keep this information and what you must tell the traveller about it, and that responsibility sits with you as the agency rather than with the software. Ask your provider whether passport expiry alerts are included and how far ahead they arrive, then open a few of your existing customer profiles and check that the expiry dates are actually filled in, because a reminder can only work on information somebody has entered.

Question 3

Can the hotel booking API confirm a room straight away, or do some hotels take time to come back to me?

Accepted Answer

Yes, most bookings made through a hotel booking API are confirmed straight away, but not every one of them is, and it helps to know which is which before you promise a room to a customer. Most rates come back as instant confirmation. You send the booking, the supplier checks with the hotel while you wait, and a confirmation number comes back within seconds. From that moment the room is held and your customer can be told the booking is done. A smaller number of rates are what suppliers call on request. There the hotel has to agree first, so the booking is accepted as pending and the real answer arrives later, sometimes within a few hours and sometimes the next working day. The API usually tells you which kind you are dealing with, either in the search results or in the response you get when you book, so your staff can see it before they speak to the customer. How clearly it is marked depends on the supplier, and some only make it obvious at the booking step. Now and then a rate that looked instant still fails, because the last room went while your request was on its way, so your process should treat the confirmation number, and not the fact that you sent a booking, as proof that the room is held. Ask each of your suppliers whether their rates include on request hotels, and set your portal up so the confirmation email only reaches the customer once that confirmation number has come back.

Question 4

Can my travel agency software add my own markup to supplier prices automatically?

Accepted Answer

Yes, most travel agency software lets you set your own markup so that the price your customer sees already includes what you earn, without anyone having to add it by hand on every quote. The usual way this works is through rules you set once and then leave alone. You can normally say that hotels carry one markup and flights carry another, and you can often go finer than that, with separate rules for a particular supplier, a particular country or route, or a particular type of customer such as your sub agents or your corporate accounts. The software applies whichever rule matches at the moment the price is displayed, so the supplier cost stays behind the scenes for your own records and the customer only ever sees your selling price. There are limits that are worth knowing before you rely on it. Some suppliers already build commission into the fare they send you, so adding a markup on top can quietly double up on what you are earning. Airline fares in particular come with rules about how they may be displayed, and on some fare types there is very little room to move. Whether you can set a flat amount, a percentage, or both together usually depends on your plan and on how each supplier returns its pricing. Before you go live, run a few test searches with your rules switched on and compare what the customer sees against what the supplier actually quoted, and check that your invoices and reports still show the supplier cost and your own earnings as separate figures.

Question 5

Can the hotel booking API tell me whether my customer can pay at the hotel instead of paying in advance?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases the hotel booking API tells you whether a room is paid to you at the time of booking or paid by the guest directly at the hotel, and this is shown on each rate rather than on the hotel as a whole. The same property can come back with both kinds of rate in one search, so one room may need payment up front while the room next to it is settled at the front desk on arrival. This matters for your cash flow and for your customer. When the rate is paid to the hotel, you are only confirming the reservation and the money never passes through your hands, so your commission is usually settled later. When the rate is prepaid, you pay the supplier at the time of booking and collect from your customer yourself, which gives you the money sooner but also leaves you carrying any refund if the booking is cancelled. Be careful with two things. A pay at hotel rate almost always still needs a valid card to hold the room, and the hotel may charge a deposit or a no show fee against it, so your customer should understand that giving card details is part of the booking. The wording suppliers use for this also differs, and a few smaller suppliers do not mark it clearly at all, so the safest habit is to show your customer exactly what the supplier returned rather than a label of your own. Check with each of your suppliers which payment types they return and how they name them, then show that wording on your booking page so your customer knows before they confirm.

Question 6

Can the flight booking API tell me if a ticket can be changed to a different date and what that will cost?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases the flight booking API can tell you whether a date change is allowed and give you an idea of the penalty, but how much detail you get back depends on the airline and on the supplier the fare came from. When you search, each fare normally comes back with its fare rules attached. Those rules say whether the ticket can be changed, whether it can be refunded, and what the airline charges if your customer wants to fly on a different day. Some suppliers return this in a tidy form that your portal can read and display on its own. Others simply pass back the airline's own rule text, which is long and written in airline language, so you or your staff will need to read it before you quote anything to the customer. It is worth being honest with your customer about one thing. The airline penalty is only part of what a date change costs. If the new date is dearer than the old one, your customer also pays the difference in the fare, and that can only be worked out at the moment you actually request the change, because seats and fares keep moving. So treat whatever you saw at search time as a guide and confirm the real amount when you process the change. If flexibility matters to the travellers you serve, check which of your suppliers return fare rules in a readable form, and think about showing a simple changeable or non changeable label on your results page so your agents can see it before they sell.

Question 7

Can I change a hotel booking through the API if my customer wants different dates or a different guest name?

Accepted Answer

Sometimes, and it depends entirely on the supplier and on the rate that was booked. Some hotel booking APIs offer a proper amendment request that lets you send new dates, a different room, or a corrected guest name, and the supplier either accepts it or turns it down. Others offer nothing of the sort, and the only way to change anything is to cancel the booking and make a new one. Even where amendments are supported, a change of dates is really a new price request, because the room you now want may cost something different or may not be free at all. That is why an amendment can come back refused even though the booking itself is perfectly valid. A simple correction such as a misspelled guest name is usually the easiest kind to get through, although some hotels still want it done by hand at their end. Cancelling and rebooking sounds like the simple answer, but it carries a real risk, because the old booking may already be inside its charge period and the new one may not be available at the same price. If the rate was a non refundable one, that route can be expensive for whoever has to absorb the difference, so it is worth checking the cancellation terms on the original booking before you touch anything. Before you promise a customer a change, look at the rate terms on the booking and ask your supplier which amendments they accept through the API and which ones have to go through their support team.

Question 8

Can I record a booking I made outside the system, like a hotel I booked directly, in my travel agency software?

Accepted Answer

Yes, you can. Almost every travel agency software lets you enter a booking by hand, so a hotel you arranged straight with the property, a flight you issued on an airline site, or a transfer you agreed with a local driver can still sit in the same place as everything you booked through the system. When you add one you normally fill in the traveller name, the supplier, the travel dates, what the supplier is charging you, what you are charging the customer, and the reference the supplier gave you. Once it is saved the booking behaves like any other. It shows on the customer file, it counts towards your sales and profit figures, and it appears in the money you still owe the supplier and the money the customer still owes you. The honest limit is that a manual booking has no live link back to the supplier. Nothing arrives to tell you that the hotel moved your guest to another property or that the airline changed the time, so you have to update the record yourself when you hear. The cancellation deadline is also only as reliable as what you typed in. Some plans give you more fields than others, so the exact boxes on your screen may differ from what a colleague sees. The next thing to check is whether your software lets you attach the supplier voucher or confirmation email to the manual booking, because that is what saves you when a query comes back months later.

Question 9

Can I cancel a ticket through the flight booking API if I issued it by mistake?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases you can, as long as the request goes in quickly and the airline allows it. A ticket issued in error can usually be voided, which means it is treated as though it was never sold and the money comes back without a penalty. That option only stays open for a short window after issue, and once it closes the ticket has to be cancelled and refunded instead, under the fare rules that applied when you booked. In practice you send the void or cancellation request through the API using the booking reference you got when the ticket was issued. The API passes it to the supplier and returns a status telling you whether the request was accepted, rejected or still being processed. Some suppliers act straight away, others queue it and confirm a little later, so your staff should read the status that comes back rather than assume the ticket has gone. Whether voiding is possible at all depends on the supplier and the airline behind the fare. Many full service carriers allow it, some low cost carriers do not, and a few suppliers only accept a request that their own team handles first. Anything deducted is set by the airline and the fare, not by your portal, so the same mistake can cost nothing on one ticket and carry a penalty on another. Ask your supplier which airlines they can void for you and how long that window stays open, and make sure your staff check the fare rules shown at the time of booking before they issue.

Question 10

Can the hotel booking API show me the same hotel from more than one supplier so I can offer the better price?

Accepted Answer

Yes, in most cases it can, but how well it works depends on the hotel content sitting behind your API. Every supplier uses its own hotel codes, so the same property can arrive under slightly different names and addresses. Matching those together into one property is called mapping, and it is done by comparing the name, the address, the map coordinates and other details. Where the match is confident, your portal can show the hotel once and put the better of the rates it found in front of your customer. Where the match is less certain, the safer behaviour is to leave the properties separate rather than merge two hotels that only look alike. You may then see what looks like a duplicate in your results. Well known city hotels and chain properties usually map cleanly, while small guest houses, apartments and recently added properties are the ones most likely to be missed. It is also worth remembering that the cheaper rate is not always the one to sell. Rates for the same room can differ in whether breakfast is included, whether they can be cancelled, and whether the guest pays you now or pays at the hotel. Compare the room name and the conditions next to the price before deciding which supplier to book through, and check whether your plan lets you decide which supplier should win when two rates are the same. If you are about to add another supplier, ask for your hotel mapping to be reviewed first, then run a few searches in the cities you sell most often and see how the results look before you go live.